A term that originates from fighting games, a Mirror Match occurs when one character fights against themselves, usually as a result of two players choosing the same character (where, normally, each character on the roster is implicitly a unique individual). This can be a rather tricky experience as the two characters are, by definition, evenly matched, and victory will rest on which player is better at using the character's skills. Typically the two players will be distinguished by color with the second player as a Palette Swap of the character's original design.

Collectible Card Games use the term as well, but with a different meaning. In a CCG, a "mirror match" is when two players with the same deck theme play against each other. While the decks likely differ in spots, the central strategy is the same.

Functionally identical is when a Ditto Fighter (most likely of the Mokujinner variety) imitates their opponent.

Examples:

The final episode of Black★Rock Shooter has a battle between Mato in Black★Rock Shooter's form versus Insane Black★Rock Shooter. Mato started out with a severe disadvantage because her Healing Factor was slower, she lacked Insane Black Rock Shooter's immunity to pain, and she couldn't bear to hurt anyone. However, when Mato is finally motivated to fight back, she proves to be just as powerful as her counterpart and eventually defeats her with a Combined Energy Attack.

In Digimon Adventure, Etemon trapped the Chosen in an arena and set a captured Greymon on them; he also arranged a trap so as to trap all of the Chosen's partner Digimon except Taichi's Agumon, whose evolved form is Greymon. Needless to say, the two fight.

A one-shot character in Hikaru no Go attempts to stalemate Akira Toya by mimicking every move Akira makes, starting by taking away the spot in the center board. Akira wins anyway by tricking him into a position where he manages to capture, breaking the guy's strategy. (Which is later revealed to be low-grade and easily countered).

One chapter of Magic Kaito had Kaito Kid facing an android double that could replicate his every move. Kid defeated the double by shooting himself in the head. Kid's gun was a toy that fired playing cards, resulting in a sore ear. The robot's gun was a weapon that fired bullets, resulting in a trashed robot.

In Naruto Shippuuden, a mirror match occurs simultaneously Gai's team, each having a copy of themselves. They eventually beat their copies by realizing that they can become better than their copies, because the copies don't improve but they do, because they've sworn to improve every day.

During his training with Killer Bee to control the Kyuubi, Naruto is faced with a mirror copy of himself... or something. He beats it by hugging it.

Subverted in Oto x Maho, where Kanata faces off with an evil duplicate. Kanata prefers physical attacks, while the Evil Twin can only use magical attacks.

The whole plot of Pokémon: The First Movie revolved around Mewtwo luring trainers to his island and making clones of their Pokémon, leading to a climax which sees each Pokémon fighting its clone.

In the first arc of Saint Seiya, the four main characters have to fight against the Black Four, which conveniently use dark-armored variants of their own respective clothes/armors. They even have slightly different variations on the heroes' signature techniques.

The villain in Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo shows some doppelganger abilities when she takes the physical shape of protagonist Fumio, complete with clothing, equipment, and muscle-memory of her fighting style.

In the Sonic the Hedgehog anime, Metal Sonic is programmed to be an exact copy on regular Sonic, and it is even implied that they share a mental link (see the part when Sara is kicking Metal Sonic in the head, and regular Sonic is writhing in pain). The two are constantly seen running into each other, until finally, Sonic says this quote:

Sonic: You might know everything I'm going to do but that's not going to help you since I know everything you're going to do! Strange, isn't it!?

Spoofed and deconstructed in one of the OVAs for The Slayers. Lina and Naga are faced with a mirror capable of creating a clone of anyone looking through it, and it produced their clones with opposite personalities. Lina's opposide personality was a pacifist, and Naga's was a Shrinking Violet; both were useless in fight.

Those Who Hunt Elves has this near the end, with all the protagonists having to fight clones of themselves. Rather disappointingly enough, they were unable to find any way to defeat them.

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, during the Orichalcos arc, Atem and Yugi end up facing each other. Yugi uses a copy of Atem's deck, except it has the Seal of Orichalcos in it.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Judai and Edo's second duel seemed to be a mirror match at first, but it turns out that Edo had splashed some Elemental HERO monsters into his deck to fool everyone, and his real archetype is Destiny HERO.

In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, one mini-arc featured Jack Atlas dueling against a robotic copy of himself who uses the exact same cards. The only difference is the copy uses three Red Daemon's Dragons instead of one. Jack gets curb-stomped the first time, but wins the rematch.

In the manga, Crow duels a dark copy of himself who uses the same deck and strategies as him. However the copy has monsters that Crow doesn't have in his deck.

Happens in the Tiger Mask manga when Tiger Mask fights his imposter, who was too trained by Tiger's Cave. At first it wasn't this, as Tiger Mask refused to resort to fouls and wore an armband while the imposter had a knuckle duster, but at one point the armband is torn away and Tiger Mask snaps and makes the imposter lose the knuckle duster, and nobody can tell who is who even after one of the two defeats the other with Tiger Mask's finisher, the Tiger V, as they couldn't be sure the imposter wouldn't know that move too. The match promoter, who could tell the difference, decides to have a laugh and declares the winner is the "Yellow Devil", Tiger Mask nickname in his early days when he only committed fouls, with the public believing the winner was the imposter until he points out that he has steel fangs on his mask and the winner has plastic ones.

Initial D: This is what Takumi's final race essentially boils down to. Takumi's opponent drives a stock Toyota AE86, and has been driving the particular mountain pass they are racing on every night for many years, to the point of mastery. Like Takumi, he didn't see the appeal in racing at first, and like Takumi, he had to be persuaded to participate by the local racers. In short, Takumi is racing against himself from the start of the series.

Board Games

Chess and Draughts/Checkers are obviously Mirror Matches, although it could be claimed that the fixed move order makes White and Black rather different prospects to play despite being otherwise identical.

An even earlier example of this came in Captain America #156, where Steve fought an insane 1950s impostor, complete with both wearing the Captain America outfit during their showdown. In addition, said impostor even looked like Stevenote He had been so devoted to Cap's original exploits, he volunteered to literally become Steve Rogers when the FBI wanted a Captain America to help them against the Communist menace in the 1950s., adding yet another layer to this all-American mirror match.

In Captain Atom #56 and #57, Cap fights a battle with his own dark side, what he calls "the chaos I have inherited."

Power Girl was once sent to the recreated version of Earth-2, only to find another Power Girl already there. The alternate Power Girl did not respond well to this "imposter". Later, Power Girl went up against "Divine", a black-haired evil clone of herself created by Maxwell Lord.

In Rat Queens, issue 3, Violet has a mirror match with her twin brother, Barrie (Barrie implies that they would look even more similar if Violet had not shaved her dwarven beard. She comes out on top of the fight and sends Barrie packing back to dwarven lands.

The original, very brief appearance of Spider-Man's clone was basically a one-issue, pretty cool Mirror Match fight that ended with the clone killed in an explosion. Twenty years later, the clone got brought back for a convoluted storyline that dominated the title for a couple of years.

In the '50s & '60s, Wonder Woman ended up with an improbably large number of storylines that involved her fighting doppelgangers of one sort or another.

In the Scott Pilgrim comics, unlike the movie, Nega-Scott has a much larger purpose. He's a manifestation of Scott's screw-ups when it comes to relationships and himself in general. Instead of defeating Nega-Scott, our hero has to come to terms with his dickery and has to merge with Nega-Scott in order to become a better person.

Teen Titans: All the Titans except Raven (who was turned into a demon and on her father's side), Jericho (who was badly injured), and Lilith (a wild card) were forced into nightmare scenes by Trigon where they had to fight their evil clones (Cyborg's copy was fully human but just as strong, stole his girlfriend, and made the disabled kids Cyborg befriended turn against him). All of them, even Nightwing and Beast Boy, killed their copies and their souls were forfeit to Trigon as a result. Unfortunately for Trigon, this didn't convert them to his side as intended and simply made their methods more ruthless. They killed Raven, which turned out to be part of Lilith and the goddess Azar's plan to stop Trigon (Raven got better... eventually).

Malibu Comics' Mortal Kombat referenced the games' Mirror Matches with the queen of a warrior tribe who just happened to look and dress like Sonya, called Queen Aynos. And yes, Sonya gets to fight her.

The One ends with a fight between two super-powered Jet Lis. While the villain Yulaw has more practice with his enhanced speed and strength, the hero Gabe is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and has been practicing martial arts daily. In the end, their style (Yulaw uses the more aggressive, straight-line Xingyiquan style, while Gabe sticks with the subtle, circular Baguazhang style) and terrain (the start of the fight is on a tight catwalk, and the end is on an open factory floor) decide the outcome. And yes, this is the best part of the movie, especially when both of them go to Super Speed, and we see the fight from their perspective (i.e. Time Stands Still).

The straight-to-video film Replicant has Jean-Claude Van Damme play a serial killer and a clone created by the government to track him down. The clone has some sort of connection with the killer but a much nicer personality. In the end, they face off in a fight. The viewers expect to see a cool fight between two Van Dammes. Instead, they got an attempt at one, as the doubles try to punch and kick one another, only to perform the same exact move (but mirrored, for some reason) and strike the other's first/leg instead.

Subverted in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, when Scott meets Nega-Scott. There was only the vaguest of foreshadowing and no real explanation, although several interpretations are possible. It looks like they're going to fight... but then they get to talking, and it turns out they have a lot in common. They decide to meet for brunch the next week.

In Superman III, Superman is exposed to some flawed synthetic kryptonite and turns "evil" (read: superpowered Jerkass). His inner conflict is played out onscreen when Clark Kent manifests in front of him and they fight until Clark wins, then tears open his shirt revealing the untarnished S-shield and flying off to undo the damage he did when he was "evil", ending the only enjoyable scene in an almost universally reviled movie.

Rock Star: The members of Steel Dragon tribute bands Blood Pollution and Black Babylon are dressed identically during a parking lot. During a long shot, the fight looks like this.

Gamebooks

A few of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that allow the player to use magic typically include a "Creature Copy" spell. When cast, the spell creates a magical duplicate of whatever monster you're facing to fight it. This includes the Sorcery! series with the KIN spell.

In the third volume of GrailQuest, one of the enemies is a distorted version of yourself created by looking in a magic mirror (the only difference is that it has only half your current LIFE POINTS).

In Book 19 of Lone Wolf, the main antagonist is an Evil Knockoff called Wolf's Bane. The main plot involves Lone Wolf chasing his evil impostor to try to bring him to justice. When you finally face him in combat, he has the same stats and abilities as you, the only difference being your respective Endurance Points if he was wounded earlier.

During the Force Heretic novels, Jedi Tahiri Veila has a series of nightmares/hallucinations/Force-trance-somethings which pit her again various aspects of herself, including her Vuuzhan Vong implanted personality (looong story), which takes the form of — you guessed it — a mirror image of herself. Interestingly, they're actually mirror images: Tahiri is left-handed and Riina right-handed, and that's the only way to distinguish between them.

Even Luke Skywalker has to deal with an evil clone of himself in one novel; the clone was imaginatively named "Luuke" Skywalker. In defense (as someone elsewhere noted), it was named by a Cloudcuckoolander villain...

Rand from The Wheel of Time series fights a more or less literal Mirror Match when a "bubble of evil" spontaneously causes his reflections to jump out of mirrors and fight him to the death. Eventually he starts wising up to the situation and extinguishes his Flaming Sword, causing his reflections to do the same (to their confusion) and making the fight slightly easier.

In Tough Magic, Yil fights his doppelganger in a practice match; the doppelganger in question being a golem programed to copy his skills and capabilities.

In ''Draconian Symphony' The protagonists escape from a dungeon guarded by a child of Nemesis, who transforms into the main character's doppelganger to fight him.

Played straight in Charmed when Paige and Phoebe and their evil Mirror Universe counterparts fight. Leo comments that they are too equally matched and neither side could win, so the fight went on and on until they realized this, called a truce, and formed an alliance instead.

A Highlander episode has Duncan go evil after killing a former friend of his and absorbing his dark essence during the Quickening. Eventually, Duncan goes into a cave and has a Battle in the Center of the Mind manifested as a swordfight between him and an evil double. Somehow, this also ends in a Quickening, although there's no body of the evil Duncan.

Kamen Rider Ghost has a literal example through an evil twin of Makoto Fukami (Kamen Rider Specter), whom the real one would fight in a Random Encounter, which results the actual Makoto suffer a seizure-induced pain each time he defeats his doppelganger. The trope is taken very literally by the time the series' reaches the endgame episodes when the impostor Makoto obtains his own Deep Specter Eyecon, all while beginning to adopt the real Makoto's mannerisms, and sporting his leather jacket to fool even further his friends.

Knight Rider: KITT facing off against his Evil Twin prototype KARR. Averted in the sequel/remake, as this version of KARR is a Transforming Mecha (and yes, the fact that he's still voiced by Peter Cullen, known for voicing Optimus Prime, is a bonus), while KITT can only transform into other cars.

This is used quite a lot in Power Rangers, being a nearly once-seasonally tradition. Often they were led by a Monster of the Week. Zeo and RPM (so far) are pretty much the only seasons who haven't had it in some form — if not identical copies, then an Evil Counterpart team will be featured, like Space's Psycho Rangers, the Spirit Rangers and Five Fingers of Poison in Jungle Fury. Oddly, only once (the very first use of the gimmick waaay back in the original series) were they used to ruin the Rangers' good name, and never have they been used to pose as a friend and backstab a good Ranger. Oddly, the Sixth Ranger seldom gets a copy. But sometimes Tommy's subverted it, facing his past selves.

All four of the boys from Red Dwarf encountered this throughout the show. Rimmer and Kryten deliberately move to create it - Rimmer because he thinks the best person to live with is himself, Kryten to save the crew from an insane gestalt entity - while Lister and the Cat have it thrust upon them.

Disappointingly averted in The Secret World of Alex Mack. Alex gets an evil duplicate, but despite both of them having telekinesis and electric powers, they never actually try to fight — Alex winds up just chasing her evil twin around until they recombine.

Lord John Roxton gets an Evil Twin in one episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World after he is cursed for disturbing a graveyard's peace. The protector takes the ruthless and violent part — basically the hunter part — out of him and gives him a life of his own. Evil!Roxton tries to kill the good one, using Marguerite as bait. It ends in a Mirror Match.

In Supernatural, towards the end of Season 6, Sam has a confrontation with Soulless Sam after Castiel brings down Death's Wall.

In the Warehouse 13 episode "Savage Seduction", Steve is duplicated by an artifact and the two of him fight briefly.

Ash vs. Evil Dead: In the episode "Ashes to Ashes", Ash fights Evil Ash, a Deadite copy of himself grown from his possessed severed hand. It plays this trope pretty straight, as each uses their knowledge of Ash's physical weak points to try and gain the upper hand.

Data East's The Simpsons features Lisa Simpson and "Bleeding Gums" Murphy playing dueling saxophones on the slingshot bumpers.

Interplay's otherwise forgettable Star Trek Pinball has a two-player table, "Nemesis", which is divided lengthwise with all playfield elements mirrored against the other side.

Pro Wrestling

The WWF tried to pull off a Mirror Match in live action at Summerslam 1994, with a match pitting The Undertaker against... The Undertaker. Unfortunately, this proved impossible to pull off with any degree of realism, as the false Undertaker they got was quite a bit shorter and slimmer than the actual Undertaker. However, this didn't stop Vince McMahon from proclaiming, "It's like looking into a mirror!"

They did this again at Vengeance in 2006, except this time it was Kanevs Kane.

WWE have tried it once again. This time, it's Sin Cara vs. Sin Cara, and surprisingly, it doesn't suck.

Sabu once faced off against a masked wrestler known as the Doppleganger, who was able to imitate Sabu's moves very well. Under the mask was Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse.

Tabletop Games

In Changeling: The Lost, one of the central conflicts for changelings is how they deal with their fetch, the magical imposter that was left behind when they were abducted. Responses to coming back after the horrific ordeal that is service to the True Fey is hard enough without having to deal with something that wears your face and has been living (or ruining) your life while you were away. Depending on how the Storyteller wants to play things, the fetch could be a malicious sociopath out to ruin the changeling's good name, a dark reflection of the changeling (or even a light reflection—nothing stops the fetch from being a better person than the changeling it replaced), or an innocent bystander with no clue why this horrible creature it dreams about wants to kill it and take over it's life.

A classic magic item is called the Mirror of Opposition, which creates a clone of anyone looking into it with all the character's items and abilities, but the exact opposite alignment (Lawful Good produces a Chaotic Evil clone, Chaotic Good produces a Lawful Evil clone, while True Neutral produces a clone of random alignment, and so on), resulting in a big fight after which the clone and its items vanish. It's also used in the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion of Baldur's Gate. In the sequel, Big Bad Jon Irenicus pulls a similar trick during the battle in Spellhold. On a similar note, high-level mages can use the Simulacrum spell to summon a (weaker) copy of themselves.

The D&D module "Quest for the Heartstone" has the climactic battle a one-on-one fight between each Player Character and a duplicate created by the Heartstone. Victory meant you stay yourself, defeat meant you change to the opposite alignment. The Players have a slight advantage over their duplicate in that the duplicate had 10 hit points less than them.

The Aleax is a divine construct sent to punish a character who's strayed from his alignment, failed to make the proper sacrifices, or generally enraged a deity. It's identical to its itended victim save for Glowing Eyes of Doom and has all the same stats (except Hit Points) and equipment, plus several other powers and immunities making it a very difficult opponent. Worst, only the designated victim can harm it; all other party members are powerless to affect an Aleax.

Dragon Ball Multiverse: One of the chapters has U16 and U18 Gotenks fighting each other, thus causing this trope to be in play. And boy, is it played to the hilt, as the two do the exact same things. So much that when they inevitably defuse, one of the halves has to ask which of the two other fighters is from his Universe. One of them just gives up.

Parodied, somewhat, when Fighter splits up the Light Warriors, Dark Warriors, and Other Warriors into new teams. Fighter places himself on every team (in one case, three times). Thief convinces Fighter that he's picked a "random" representative from each team to have a fight to the death (naturally, he picked each team's Fighter), leaving a very confused Fighter fighting "himself"... but there's still really only one of him, so he stoically waits for an attack to counter, leaving him frozen in place for a while. But then again, you can't really trust Fighter to be realistic for long.

One story in Deviant Universe involved heroes and villains fighting themselves from another universe where they were the opposite alignment.

Goblins has a variation; the dungeon the Maze of Many forms a link between all the dimensions in the multiverse, and pits adventuring parties against versions of themselves from all possible realities. It's not a straight mirror match, though, since there are subtle differences between each individual, depending on which reality they originated in.

Mulberry witnesses one when she watches the movie Batman vs. Batman. To her disappointment, the Batmen spend their confrontation boasting how Crazy-Prepared they are to face each other, and a "To Be Spread Out Over Six Movies" card appears before they actually start fighting.

Western Animation

In an episode of Aladdin: The Series, Chaos makes an evil copy of Aladdin. The hero wins by using his evil counterpart's lamp to wish him away. The "evil" Aladdin didn't free his genie as the real Aladdin did.

When Captain America finally gets to face off against his Skrull doppelganger, it goes down like this, though the Skrull Cap was already transformed and looks like an alien wearing the Captain America suit rather than a direct mirror image of the Star-Spangled Avenger. Cap is more than a match for his double and defeats him in a most satisfyingmanner.

The episode in which Skrull impersonators of the first eight Avengers try to invade Wakanda has Black Panther, Wasp, and Hawkeye each fight alien versions of themselves. The real Black Panther and Hawkeye each kill their alien counterparts, while Wasp's becomes defeated by Hawkeye. The other Skrulls have to settle for fighting Avengers that they aren't copying.

Another episode features the Avengers dealing with robotic copies created by Ultron. Two notable scenes in the episode include a direct example of this trope: One with Hawkeye and Cap dealing with their robot doubles at Avengers Mansion, and later at the climax when the assembled Avengers team take on the entire team of robot Avengers (save for the Captain America double, who had been destroyed in the former battle at the Mansion.).

Megatron of Beast Wars was able to create a clone of Dinobot with the original's personality and memories, but an inability to transform. The real Dinobot and the clone battled with former opting to remain in beast mode to keep the match fair. The original ultimately defeats and eats the clone remarking that he was quite tasty.

In the Futurama episode "The Farnsworth Parabox", the gang enter an Alternate Universe and the two Leelas start fighting. But because their moves are identical, they both knock each other out after the first hit.

In the episode "Divided We Fall", Luthor-Brainiac recreated the Justice Lords (and a very Reverse-Flash-looking evil Flash) for the original founders of the Justice League to fight. They stopped them by going up against different copies, instead of their counterparts. Except the Flash, who beats his evil counterpart on his lonesome. Dude knows how to deal with his issues. (That's because he is the only sane one of them. He just got super powers and decided to help people.) IIRC, Batman beat his duplicate as well.

Also played with in the episode "Fearful Symmetry": As Supergirl battles her Evil Counterpart Galetaea, the Clothing Damage of their costumes starts to make them mirror the other's...

In an episode of Recess, the main characters have to play a kickball match against a Similar Squad from another school. The similar tactics of both teams keep the game at a stalemate.

Aku once created a clone of Samurai Jack from his negative emotions. They were evenly matched until Jack cleansed himself of all negative emotions, destroying the clone.

The whole Saturday family has almost exact mirror matches from an alternate universe.

Steven Universe: "Ocean Gem" has Steven and the Gems fighting water clones produced by the eponymous gem, Lapis Lazuli. They're almost evenly matched, but the copies eventually gain the upper hand. Steven ends the fight by summoning his shield (for the first time in the series since "Cookie Cat", the first episode), which causes the clones to disperse. Noticeably, the music track that plays during the fight is called Mirror Match.

"Spitting Images": Panthro fights an evil clone of himself. They are evenly matched, but Lion-O ends the fight by blasting them both. The Sword of Omens wouldn't harm a fellow ThunderCat, but destroyed the clone.

"Fond Memories": Mumm-Ra takes on Lion-O's form before fighting him. Lion-O wins because Mumm-Ra keeps his weakness to his own reflection no matter what form he is in.

In Transformers Prime, human terrorist organization, MECH, ultimately succeeds in creating a robot drone with all of Optimus Prime's abilities and strengths that defeats all the other Autobots and manages to fight Optimus on equal footing. He is ultimately defeated when one of the Autobot's human allies distracts the drone's operator.

In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Brain Drain", Phineas and Ferb spend a sick-day playing a fighting game based on themselves with their friends. Phineas ends up matched against... himself.

Phineas: Check it out, I'm kicking my own butt!

Real Life

During World War I, the German commerce raider SMS Cap Trafalgar disguised itself as the British commerce raider HMS Carmania to deceive its prey. By sheer coincidence, the two vessels happened across one another and engaged in a naval battle that ended with the Cap Trafalgar's sinking.

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